The natural
susceptibility
of those who
think more than they act, may render them
unjust to persons of a different description.
think more than they act, may render them
unjust to persons of a different description.
Madame de Stael - Germany
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? 220 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
certainly he did not so express himself to ex-
clude philosophy, but because he was con-
vinced that the highest and the deepest ideas
led to the discovery of the singular agree-
ment between that religion and the nature of
man. Between these two classes of* moralists,
that which with Kant, and others still more
abstracted, refers all the actions of morality
to immutable precepts, and that which with
Jacobi declares, that every thing is to be left
to the decision of sentiment, Christianity
seems to show the wonderful point, at which
the positive law has not excluded the inspi-
ration of the heart, nor that inspiration the
positive law.
Jacobi, who has so much reason to confide
in the purity of his conscience, was wrong to
lay down as a principle that we should yield
entirely to whatever the motions of our mind
may suggest. The dryness of some intolerant
writers, who admit no modification or in-
dulgence in the application of some precepts,
has driven Jacobi into the contrary excess.
When the French moralists are severe,
they are so to a degree, which destroys in-
dividual character in man; it is the spirit of
the nation to love authority in every thing.
The German philosophers, and Jacobi above
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? JACOBI. 1 1 221
all, respect what constitutes the particular
existence of every being, and judge of actions
by their source, that is to say, according to
the good or bad impulse which causfes them.
There are a thousand ways of being a very
bad man, without offending against any re-
ceived law, as a detestable tragedy may be
written, without any neglect of theatrical
rules and effect. When the soul has no na-
tural spring, it seeks to know what ought to
be said, and what ought to be done, ih every
circumstance, that it may be acquitted
towards itself, and towards others, by sub-
mitting to what is ordained. The law, how-
ever, in morality, as in poetry, can only
teach what ought not to be done; but, in
all things, what is good and sublime, is only
revealed to us by the divinity of our heart.
Public utility, as I have explained it in the
preceding chapter, might lead us to be im-
moral by morality. In the relations of pri-
vate life, on the contrary, it may sometimes
happen, that a conduct which is perfect ac-
cording to worldly estimation, may proceed
from a bad principle; that is to say, may
belong to something dry, malicious, and un-
charitable. Natural passions and superior
talents are displeasing to those men who are
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? 222 PHILOSOPHY AtfP HOEALS.
too easily dignified with the name of severe:
they avail themselves of their morality, which
they say comes from God, as an enemy
would take the sword of a father to destroy
bis children.
At the same time Jacobi's aversion to
the inflexible rigour of law, leads him too far
in freeing himself from it. "Yes," says he,
"I would be a liar like the dying Desde-
"njiona*; I would deceive like Orestes,
"when he wished to die instead of Pylades;
<* 1 would be an assassin like Timoleon; per-
"jured like Epaminondas and John de Witt;
"J (Could resolve to commit suicide like
"Cato; or sacrilege like David; for I have
"an assurance within me, that in pardoning
"these things, which are crimes according
"to the letter, man exercises the sovereign
M right which the majesty of his nature con-
"fers upon him;. fixes the seal of his dignity,
"the seal of his divine nature, to the pardon
"which be grants.
"If you would establish a system universal
"and strictly scientific, you must submit
"conscience to that system which has pe-
* Desdemona, in order to save her husband from the dis-
grace and danger of the crime he has jm%t committed, declares,
at she it dying, that the has killed herself.
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? JACOBI.
283
"trified life: that conscience must become
"deaf, dumb, and insensible; even the
"smallest remains of its root (that is, of the
"human heart) must be torn up. Yes, as
"truly as your metaphysical forms fill the
"place of Apollo and the Muses, it is only
"by imposing silence on your heart that you
"will be able implicitly to conform to laws
"without exception, and that you will adopt
"the hard and servile obedience which tbey
"demand: thus conscience will only serve
"to teach you, like a professor in his chair,
"the truth that is without you; and this
"inward light will soon be no more than a
"finger-post set up on the highway to direct
"travellers on their journey. "
Jacobi is so well guided by his own sen-
timents, that perhaps be has not sufficiently
reflected on the consequences of this morality
to ordinary men; for what answer could be
given to those who should pretend, in depart-
ing from duty, that they obey the sugges-
tions of their conscience? Undoubtedly,
we may discover that they are hypocrites
who speak thus; but we have furnished
them with an argument which will serve
to justify them, whatever they may do;
and it is a gieat tiling for men to have
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? 224 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
phrases to repeat in favour of their conduct!
they make use of them at first to deceive
others, and end with deceiving themselves.
Will it be said that this independent doc-
trine can only suit characters which are truly
virtuous? There ought to be no privileges
even for Virtue; for from the moment she
desires them, it is probable she ceases to
deserve them. A sublime equality reigns in
the empire of duty, and something passes at
the bottom of the human heart which gives
to every man, when he sincerely desires it,
the means of performing all that enthusiasm
inspires, without transgressing the limits of
the Christian law, which is also the work of
an holy enthusiasm.
The doctrine of Kant may in effect be
considered as too dry, because it does not
attribute sufficient influence to religion; but
it is not surprising that he should have been
inclined not to make sentiment the base of
his morality, at a time when there was so
widely diffused, and especially in Gerniany,
an affectation of sensibility, which necessarily
weakened the spring of minds and characters.
A genius like Kant's should have for its
object, to give a new dye to the mind.
The German moralists of the new school,
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? jacobi. 225
so pure in their sentiments, to whatever ab-
stract systems they abandon themselves, may
be divided into three classes: those who, like
Kant and Fichte, have aimed at giving to
the law of duty a scientific theory, and an
inflexible application; those, at the head of
whom Jacobi is to be placed, who take reli-
gious sentiment and natural conscience for
their guides; and those who, making revela-
tion the basis of their belief, endeavour to
unite sentiment and duty, and seek to bind
them together by a philosophical interpreta-
tion. These three classes of moralists equally
attack morality founded on self-interest. --
That morality has now scarcely any partisans
in Germany; evil actions may be done there,
but at least the theory of what is right is left
untouched,
VOL. IH.
Q
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? 226 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER XVII.
Of Woldemar.
The romance of Woldemar is the work of
the same philosopher, Jacobi, of whom I
have spoken in the last chapter. This work
contains philosophical discussions, in which
the svstems of morality professed by the
French writers are warmly attacked, and the
doctrine of Jacobi is explained in it with ad-
mirable eloquence. In that respect Wolde-
mar is a very fine book; but as a novel I
neither like the conduct nor the end of it.
The author, who, as a philosopher, refers all
human destiny to sentiment, describes in his
work, as it appears to me, sensibility differ-
ently from what it is in fact. An exagge-
rated delicacy, or rather a whimsical manner
of considering the human heart, may interest
in theory, but not when it is put in action, and
thus attempted to be made something real.
Woldemar feels a warm friendship for a
person who will not marry him, although
she partakes of his feeling: he marries a
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? WOLDEMAR. 227
woman he does not love, because he thinks
he has found in her a submissive and gentle
character, which is proper for marriage.
Scarcely has he married her, when he is on
the point of giving himself up to the love
he feels for the other. She, who would not
be united to him, still loves him, but she
revolts at the idea that it is possible for
him to love her; and yet she desires to live
near him, to take care of his children, to
treat his wife as her sister, and only to know
the affections of nature by the sj'tnpathy of
friendship. It is thus that a piece of Goethe,
much boasted of, Stella, finishes with a reso-
lution taken by two women, bound by sacred
ties to the same man, to live with him in
good understanding with each other. Such .
inventions only succeed in Germany, because
in that country there is frequently more
imagination than sensibility. Southern souls
would understand nothing of this heroism
of sentiment; passion is devoted, but jealous;
and that pretended delicacy, which sacri-
fices love to friendship, without the injunc-
tions of duty, is nothing but an affected
coldness.
All this generosity at the expense of love
is merely an artificial system. We must not
q2
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? 228 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
admit toleration, or rivality, into a sentiment
which is then only sublime, when, like ma-
ternal and filial tenderness, it is exclusive
and all-powerful. We ought not, by our
own choice, to place ourselves in a situation
where morals and sensibility are not of one
accord; for what is involuntary is so beau-
tiful, that it is alarming to be condemned to
give orders to ourselves in all our actions,
and to live as if we were our own victims.
It is, assuredly, neither from hypocrisy,
nor from dryness of character, that a writer
of real and excellent genius has imagined, in
the novel of Woldemar, situations in which
every personage sacrifices sentiment by means
of sentiment, and anxiously seeks a reason
for not loving what he loves. But Jacobi,
who had felt from his youth a lively inclina-
tion towards every species of enthusiasm, has
here sought out for a romantic mysterious-
ness in the attachments of the heart, which
i9 very ingeniously described, but is quite
foreign to nature. .
It seems to mc that Jacobi understands
religion better than love, for he is too de-
sirous of confounding them. It is not true
that love, like rejigion, can find all its.
happiness in the renunciation of happiness
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? WOLD EM A R. . 229
itself. We change the idea that we ought
to entertain of virtue, when we make it con-
sist in a sort of exalted feeling which has no
object, and in sacrifices for which there is
no necessity. All the characters in Jacobi's
novel are continually tilting with their gene-
rosity against their love :--not only is this
unlike what happens in life, but it has no
moral beauty when virtue does not require
it; for strong and passionate feelings honour
human nature; and religion is so impressive
as it is, precisely because it can triumph
over such feelings. Would it have been
necessary for God himself to condescend to
address the human heart, if there were only
found in that heart some cold and grace-
ful affections which it would be so easy to
renounce?
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? 230 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Of a romantic Bias in the Affections of the
Heart.
The English philosophers have founded vir-
tue, as we have said, upon feeling, or rather
upon the moral sense; but this system has
no connexion with the sentimental morality
of which we are here talking: this morality
(the name and idea of which hardly exist
out of Germany) has nothing philosophical
about it; it only makes a duty of sensibility,
and leads to the contempt of those who are
deficient in that quality.
Doubtless, the power of feeling love is
very closely connected with morality and
religion: it is possible then that our repug-
nance to cold and hard minds is a sublime
sort of instinct--an instinct which apprizes
us, that such beings, even when their con-
duct is estimable, act mechanically, or by
calculation; and that it is impossible for any
sympathy to exist between us and them. In
Germany, where it is attempted to reduce all
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? OP A ROMANTIC BIAS. 231
impressions into precepts, every thing has
been deemed immoral which was destitute
of sensibility--nay, which was not of a ro-
mantic character. Werther had brought ex-
alted sentiments so much into fashion, that
hardly any body dared to show that he was
dry and cold of nature, even when he was
condemned to such a nature in reality. From
thence arose that forced sort of enthusiasm
for the moon, for forests, for the country,
and for solitude; from thence those nervous
fits, that affectation in the very voice, those
looks which wished to be seen; in a word,
all that apparatus of sensibility, which vi-
gorous and sincere minds disdain.
The author of Werther was the first to
laugh at these affectations; but, as ridicu-
lous practices must be found in all countries,
perhaps it is better that they should consist
in the somewhat silly exaggeration of what
is good, than in the elegant pretension
to what is evil. As the desire of success
is unconquerable among men, and still
more so among women, the pretensions of
mediocrity are a certain sign of the ruling
taste at such an epoch, and in such a
society; the same persons who displayed
their sentimentality in Germany, would have
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? 232 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
elsewhere exhibited a levity and supercilious-
ness of character.
The extreme susceptibility of the German
character is one of the great causes of the
importance they attach to the least shades of
sentiment; and this susceptibility frequently
arises from the truth of the affections. It is
easy to be firm when we have no sensibility;
the sole quality which is then necessary is
courage; for a well-regulated severity must
begin with self:--but, when the proofs of
interest in our welfare, which others give or
refuse us, powerfully influence our happiness,
we must have a thousand times more irrita-
bility in our hearts than those who use their
friends as they would an estate, and endea-
vour solely to make them profitable. At the
same lime we ought to be on our guard
against those codes of subtle and many-
shaded sentiment, which the German writers
have multiplied in such various manners, and
with which their romances are filled. The
Germans, it must be confessed, are not
always perfectly natural. Certain of their
own uprightness, of their own sincerity in all
the real relations of life, they are tempted to
regard the affected love of the beautiful as
united to the worship of the good, and to
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? OF A ROMANTIC BIAS. 233
indulge themselves, occasionally, in exagge-
rations of this sort, which spoil every thing.
This rivalship of sensibility, between some
German ladies and authors, would at the
bottom be innocent enough, if the ridiculous
appearance which it gives to affectation did
not always throw a kind of discredit upon
sincerity itself. Cold and selfish persons find
a peculiar pleasure in laughing at passionate
affections; and would wish to make every
thing appear artificial which they do not ex-
perience. There are even persons of true
sensibility whom this sugared sort of exagge-
ration cloys with their own impressions; and
their feelings become exhausted, as we may
exhaust their religion, by tedious sermons
and superstitious practices.
It is wrong to apply the positive ideas
which we have of good and evil to the sub-
tilties of sensibility. To accuse this or that
character of their deficiencies in this respect,
is like making it a crime not to be a poet.
The natural susceptibility of those who
think more than they act, may render them
unjust to persons of a different description.
We must possess imagination to conjecture
all that the heart can make us suffer; and the
best sort of people in the world are often dull
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? 234 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
and stupid in this respect: they march right
across our feelings, as if they were treading
upon flowers, and wondering that they fade
away. Are there not men v! hd have no
admiration for Raphael, who hear music
without emotion, to whom the ocean and
the heavens are but monotonous appearances?
How then should they comprehend the tem-
pests of the soul?
Are not even those who are most endowed
with sensibility sometimes discouraged in
their hopes? May they not be overcome by
a sort of inward coldness, as if the God-
head was retiring from their bosoms? They
remain not less faithful to their affections;
but there is no more incense in the temple, no
more music in the sanctuary, no more emo-
tion in the heart. Often also does misfor-
tune bid us silence in ourselves this voice of
sentiment, harmonious or distracting in its
tone, as it agrees, or not, with our destiny.
It is then impossible to make a duty of sen-
sibility; for those who own it suffer so much
from its possession, as frequently to have the
right and the desire to subject it to restraint.
Nations of ardent character do not talk of
sensibility without terror: a peaceable and
dreaming people believe they can encourage
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? OF A ROMANTIC BIAS. 235
it without alarm. For the rest, it is pos-
sible, that this subject has never been written
upon with perfect sincerity; for every one
wishes to do himself honour by what he
feels, or by what he inspires. Women en-
deavour to set themselves out like a romance;
men like a history; but the human heart is
still far from being penetrated in its most in-
timate relations. At one time or another,
perhaps, somebody will tell us sincerely all
he has felt; and we shall be quite astonished
at discovering, that the greater part of
maxims and observations are erroneous, and
that there is an unknown soul at the bottom
of that which we have been describing.
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? 236 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER XIX.
Of Love in Marriage.
It is in marriage that sensibility is a duty:
in every other relation virtue may suffice;
but in that in which destinies are inter-
twined, where the same impulse, so to speak,
serves for the beatings of two hearts, it seems
that a profound affection is almost a ne-
cessary tie. The levity of manners has in-
troduced so much misery into married life,
that the moralists of the last age were ac-
customed to refer all the enjoyments of the
heart to paternal and maternal love; and
ended by almost considering marriage only
in the light of a requisite condition for en-
joying the happiness of having children.
This is false in morals, and still more false
with regard to happiness. ?
It is so easy to be good for the sake of
our children, that we ought not to make a
great merit of it. In their first years they
can have no will but that of their parents;
and when they have arrived at youth, they
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? OF LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 2Sf
exist by themselves. Justice and goodness
compose the principal duties of a relation
which nature makes easy. It is not thus in
our connexions with that half of ourselves,
who may find happiness or unhappiness in
the least of our actions, of our looks, and of
our thoughts. It is there alone that mo-
rality can exert itself in its complete energy;
it is there also that is placed the true source
of felicity.
A friend of the same age, in whose pre-
sence you are to live and die; a friend whose
every interest is your own; all whose pro-
spects are partaken by yourself, including
that of the grave: here is a feeling which
constitutes all our fate. Sometimes, it is
true, our children, and more often our
parents, become our companions through
life; but this rare and sublime enjoyment is
combated by the laws of nature; while the
marriage-union is in accord with the whole
of human existence.
Whence comes it, then, that this so holy
union is so often profaned? I will venture to
say it--the cause is, that remarkable inequality
which the opinion of society establishes be-
tween the duties of the two parties. Chris-
tianity has drawn women out of a state that
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? 538 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
resembled slavery. Equality, in the sight
of God, being the basis of this wondeful re-
ligion, it has a tendency towards maintain-
ing the equality of rights upon earth :--di-
vine justice, the only perfect justice, admits
no kind of privilege, and, above all, refuses
that of force. Nevertheless, there have been
left, by the slavery of women, some preju-
dices, which, combining with the great li-
berty that society allows them, have occa-
sioned many evils.
It is right to exclude women from politi-
cal and civil affairs; nothing is more opposite
to their natural destination than all that
would bring them into rivalry with men;
and glory itself would be for woman only a
splendid mourning-suit for happiness. But,
if the destiny of women ought to consist in
a continual act of devotion to conjugal love,
the recompense of this devotion is the strict
faithfulness of him who is its object.
Religion makes no distinction between the
duties of the two parties; but the world
establishes a wide difference; and out of this
difference grows intrigue in women, and re-
sentment in men.
"What heart can give itself entirely up,
"Nor wish another heart alike entire? "
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? OF LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 239
Who then, in good faith, accepts friendship
as the price of love? Who, sincerely, pro-
raises constancy to voluntary infidelity? Re-
ligion, without doubt, can demand it; for
she alone knows the secret of that mysterious
land where sacrifices are enjoyments:--but
how unjust is the exchange to which man
endeavours to make his companion submit!
"I will love you," he says, "passion-
"ately, for two or three years; and then,
"at the end of that time, I will talk reason
"to you. " And this, which they call reason,
is the disenchantment of life. "I will show,
"in my own house, coldness and weari-
"someness of spirit; I will try to please else-
"where: but you, who are ordinarily pos-
"sessed of more imagination and sensibility
"than lam; you, who have nothing to em-
"ploy, nor to distract you, while the world
"offers me every sort of avocation; you,
"who only exist for me, while I have a
"thousand other thoughts; you will be sa-
"tisfied with that subordinate, icy, divided
"affection, which it is convenient to me to
"grant you; and you will reject with dis-
41 dain all the homage which expresses more
"exalted and more tender sentiments. "
How unjust a treaty! all human feeling
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? 240 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
revolts from it. There is a singular con-
trast between the forms of respect towards
women, which the spirit of chivalry intro-
duced in Europe, and the tyrannical sort of
liberty which men have allotted to them-
selves. This contrast produces all the mis-
fortunes of sentiment, unlawful attachments,
perfidy, abandonment, and despair. The
German nations have been less afflicted than
others with these fatal events; but they
ought, upon this point, to fear the influence
which is sure to be exerted at length by mo-
dern civilization. It would be better to shut
up women like slaves, neither to rouse their
understanding nor their imagination, than to
launch them into the middle of the world,
and to develope all their faculties, in order
to refuse them at last the happiness which
those faculties render necessary to them.
There is an excess of wretchedness in an
unhappy marriage which transcends every
other misery in the world. The whole soul
of a wife reposes upon the attachment of
her husband :--to struggle alone against for-
tune; to advance towards the grave without
the friend who should regret us; this is an
isolated state, of which the Arabian desert
gives but a faint idea:--and, when all the
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? OF LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 241
treasure of your youthful years has been re-
signed in vain; when you hope no longer,
at the end of life, the reflection of those
early rays; when the twilight has nothing
more that can recall the dawn, but is pale
and discoloured as the phantom that fore-
runs the night:--then your heart revolts;
and if you still love the being who treats you
as a slave, since he does not belong to you,
and yet disposes of you, despair seizes all
your faculties, and Conscience herself grows
troubled at the intensity of your distress.
Women might address those husbands
who treat their fate with levity in these lines
of the fable :--
"Yes! for you it is but play--
"But it steals our lives away. "
And uatil some revolution of ideas shall take
place, which changes the opinion of men as
to the constancy which the marriage-tie im-
poses upon them, there will be always war
between the two sexes; secret, eternal, cun-
ning, perfidious war; and the morals of both
will equally suffer by it.
In Germany there is hardly any inequality
in marriage between the two sexes; but it is
because the women, as often as the men,
break the most holy bonds. The facility of
VOL. III. R
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? 242 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
divorce introduces in family connexions a sort
of anarchy which suffers nothing to remain
in its proper truth or strength. It would be
much better, in order to maintain something
sacred upon earth, that there were one slave
in marriage, rather than two free-thinkers.
Purity of mind and conduct is the first
glory of a woman. What a degraded being
would she be, deprived of both these qua-
lities! But general happiness, and the dig-
nity of the human species, would perhaps
not gain less by the fidelity of man in mar-
riage. In a word, what is there more beau-
tiful in moral order than a young man who
respects this sacred tie? Opinion does not
require it of him; society leaves him free:
a sort of savage pleasantry would endeavour
to ridicule even the complaints of the heart
which he had broken; for censure is easily,
turned upon the sufferer. He then is the
master, but he imposes duties on himself;
no disagreeable result can arise to himself
from his faults; but he dreads the evil he
may do to her who has intrusted herself to
his heart; and generosity attaches him so
much the more, because society dissolves his
attachment.
Fidelity is enjoined to women by a thou-
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? Ofc LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 243
sand different considerations. They may
dread the dangers and the disgraces which
are the inevitable consequences of one error.
The voice of Conscience alone is audible by
man; he knows he causes suffering to an-
other; he knows that he is destroying, by his
inconstancy, a sentiment which ought to last
till death, and to be renewed in heaven:--
alone with himself, alone in the midst of se-
ductions of every kind, he remains pure as
an angel; for if angels have not been repre-
sented under the characters of women, it is
because the union of strength and purity is
more beautiful, and also more celestial, than
even the most perfect modesty itself in a
feeble being.
Imagination, when it has not memory for
a bridle, detracts from what we possess, em-
bellishes what we fear we shall not obtain,
and turns sentiment into a conquered diffi-
culty. But; in the same manner as in the
arts, difficulties vanquished do not require
real genius; so in sentiment security is ne-
cessary, in order to experience those affec-
tions which are the pledges of eternity, be-
cause they alone give us an idea of that
which cannot come to an end.
To the young man who remains faithful,
r3
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? 244 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
every day seems to increase the preference he
feels towards her he loves; nature has be-
stowed on him unbounded freedom, and for
a long time, at least, he never looks forward
to evil days: his horse can carry him to the
end of the world; war, when to that he
devotes himself, frees him (at least at the
moment) from domestic relations, and seems
to reduce all the interest of existence to vic-
tory or death. The earth is his own, all its
pleasures are offered to him; no fatigue in-
timidates him, no intimate association is ne-
cessary to him ; he clasps the hand of a com-
panion in arms, and the only tie he thinks
necessary to him is formed. A time will,
no doubt, arrive when Destiny will reveal to
him her dreadful secrets; but, as yet, he sus-
pects them not. Every time that a new ge-
neration comes into possession of its domain,
does it not think that all the misfortunes of
its predecessors arose from their weakness?
Is it not persuaded that they were born weak
and trembling, as they now are seen? Well!
From the midst of so many illusions, how
virtuous and sensible is he who devotes him-
self to a lasting attachment; the tie which
binds this life to the other! Ah, how noble
is a manly and dignified expression, when,
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? OP LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 245
at the same time, it is modest and pure!
There we behold a ray of that heavenly
shame which beams from the crown of holy
virgins, to light up even the warrior's brow.
If a young man chooses to share with one
object the bright days of youth, he will,
doubtless, amongst his contemporaries, meet
with some who will pronounce the sentence
of dupery upon him, the terror of the children
of our times. But is he, who alone will be
truly loved, a dupe? for the distresses, or
the enjoyments of self-love, form the whole
tissue of the frivolous and deceitful affections.
Is he a dupe who does not amuse himself in
deceiving others? to be, in his turn, still
more deceived, more deeply ruined perhaps
than his victim? In short, is he a dupe
who has not sought for happiness in the
wretched combinations of vanity, but in the
eternal beauties of nature, which all proceed
from constancy, from duration, and from
depth?
No; God, in creating man the first, has
made him the noblest of his creatures; and
the most noble creature is that one which
has the greater number of duties to perform.
It is a singular abuse of the prerogative of a
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?
? 220 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
certainly he did not so express himself to ex-
clude philosophy, but because he was con-
vinced that the highest and the deepest ideas
led to the discovery of the singular agree-
ment between that religion and the nature of
man. Between these two classes of* moralists,
that which with Kant, and others still more
abstracted, refers all the actions of morality
to immutable precepts, and that which with
Jacobi declares, that every thing is to be left
to the decision of sentiment, Christianity
seems to show the wonderful point, at which
the positive law has not excluded the inspi-
ration of the heart, nor that inspiration the
positive law.
Jacobi, who has so much reason to confide
in the purity of his conscience, was wrong to
lay down as a principle that we should yield
entirely to whatever the motions of our mind
may suggest. The dryness of some intolerant
writers, who admit no modification or in-
dulgence in the application of some precepts,
has driven Jacobi into the contrary excess.
When the French moralists are severe,
they are so to a degree, which destroys in-
dividual character in man; it is the spirit of
the nation to love authority in every thing.
The German philosophers, and Jacobi above
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? JACOBI. 1 1 221
all, respect what constitutes the particular
existence of every being, and judge of actions
by their source, that is to say, according to
the good or bad impulse which causfes them.
There are a thousand ways of being a very
bad man, without offending against any re-
ceived law, as a detestable tragedy may be
written, without any neglect of theatrical
rules and effect. When the soul has no na-
tural spring, it seeks to know what ought to
be said, and what ought to be done, ih every
circumstance, that it may be acquitted
towards itself, and towards others, by sub-
mitting to what is ordained. The law, how-
ever, in morality, as in poetry, can only
teach what ought not to be done; but, in
all things, what is good and sublime, is only
revealed to us by the divinity of our heart.
Public utility, as I have explained it in the
preceding chapter, might lead us to be im-
moral by morality. In the relations of pri-
vate life, on the contrary, it may sometimes
happen, that a conduct which is perfect ac-
cording to worldly estimation, may proceed
from a bad principle; that is to say, may
belong to something dry, malicious, and un-
charitable. Natural passions and superior
talents are displeasing to those men who are
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? 222 PHILOSOPHY AtfP HOEALS.
too easily dignified with the name of severe:
they avail themselves of their morality, which
they say comes from God, as an enemy
would take the sword of a father to destroy
bis children.
At the same time Jacobi's aversion to
the inflexible rigour of law, leads him too far
in freeing himself from it. "Yes," says he,
"I would be a liar like the dying Desde-
"njiona*; I would deceive like Orestes,
"when he wished to die instead of Pylades;
<* 1 would be an assassin like Timoleon; per-
"jured like Epaminondas and John de Witt;
"J (Could resolve to commit suicide like
"Cato; or sacrilege like David; for I have
"an assurance within me, that in pardoning
"these things, which are crimes according
"to the letter, man exercises the sovereign
M right which the majesty of his nature con-
"fers upon him;. fixes the seal of his dignity,
"the seal of his divine nature, to the pardon
"which be grants.
"If you would establish a system universal
"and strictly scientific, you must submit
"conscience to that system which has pe-
* Desdemona, in order to save her husband from the dis-
grace and danger of the crime he has jm%t committed, declares,
at she it dying, that the has killed herself.
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? JACOBI.
283
"trified life: that conscience must become
"deaf, dumb, and insensible; even the
"smallest remains of its root (that is, of the
"human heart) must be torn up. Yes, as
"truly as your metaphysical forms fill the
"place of Apollo and the Muses, it is only
"by imposing silence on your heart that you
"will be able implicitly to conform to laws
"without exception, and that you will adopt
"the hard and servile obedience which tbey
"demand: thus conscience will only serve
"to teach you, like a professor in his chair,
"the truth that is without you; and this
"inward light will soon be no more than a
"finger-post set up on the highway to direct
"travellers on their journey. "
Jacobi is so well guided by his own sen-
timents, that perhaps be has not sufficiently
reflected on the consequences of this morality
to ordinary men; for what answer could be
given to those who should pretend, in depart-
ing from duty, that they obey the sugges-
tions of their conscience? Undoubtedly,
we may discover that they are hypocrites
who speak thus; but we have furnished
them with an argument which will serve
to justify them, whatever they may do;
and it is a gieat tiling for men to have
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? 224 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
phrases to repeat in favour of their conduct!
they make use of them at first to deceive
others, and end with deceiving themselves.
Will it be said that this independent doc-
trine can only suit characters which are truly
virtuous? There ought to be no privileges
even for Virtue; for from the moment she
desires them, it is probable she ceases to
deserve them. A sublime equality reigns in
the empire of duty, and something passes at
the bottom of the human heart which gives
to every man, when he sincerely desires it,
the means of performing all that enthusiasm
inspires, without transgressing the limits of
the Christian law, which is also the work of
an holy enthusiasm.
The doctrine of Kant may in effect be
considered as too dry, because it does not
attribute sufficient influence to religion; but
it is not surprising that he should have been
inclined not to make sentiment the base of
his morality, at a time when there was so
widely diffused, and especially in Gerniany,
an affectation of sensibility, which necessarily
weakened the spring of minds and characters.
A genius like Kant's should have for its
object, to give a new dye to the mind.
The German moralists of the new school,
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? jacobi. 225
so pure in their sentiments, to whatever ab-
stract systems they abandon themselves, may
be divided into three classes: those who, like
Kant and Fichte, have aimed at giving to
the law of duty a scientific theory, and an
inflexible application; those, at the head of
whom Jacobi is to be placed, who take reli-
gious sentiment and natural conscience for
their guides; and those who, making revela-
tion the basis of their belief, endeavour to
unite sentiment and duty, and seek to bind
them together by a philosophical interpreta-
tion. These three classes of moralists equally
attack morality founded on self-interest. --
That morality has now scarcely any partisans
in Germany; evil actions may be done there,
but at least the theory of what is right is left
untouched,
VOL. IH.
Q
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? 226 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER XVII.
Of Woldemar.
The romance of Woldemar is the work of
the same philosopher, Jacobi, of whom I
have spoken in the last chapter. This work
contains philosophical discussions, in which
the svstems of morality professed by the
French writers are warmly attacked, and the
doctrine of Jacobi is explained in it with ad-
mirable eloquence. In that respect Wolde-
mar is a very fine book; but as a novel I
neither like the conduct nor the end of it.
The author, who, as a philosopher, refers all
human destiny to sentiment, describes in his
work, as it appears to me, sensibility differ-
ently from what it is in fact. An exagge-
rated delicacy, or rather a whimsical manner
of considering the human heart, may interest
in theory, but not when it is put in action, and
thus attempted to be made something real.
Woldemar feels a warm friendship for a
person who will not marry him, although
she partakes of his feeling: he marries a
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? WOLDEMAR. 227
woman he does not love, because he thinks
he has found in her a submissive and gentle
character, which is proper for marriage.
Scarcely has he married her, when he is on
the point of giving himself up to the love
he feels for the other. She, who would not
be united to him, still loves him, but she
revolts at the idea that it is possible for
him to love her; and yet she desires to live
near him, to take care of his children, to
treat his wife as her sister, and only to know
the affections of nature by the sj'tnpathy of
friendship. It is thus that a piece of Goethe,
much boasted of, Stella, finishes with a reso-
lution taken by two women, bound by sacred
ties to the same man, to live with him in
good understanding with each other. Such .
inventions only succeed in Germany, because
in that country there is frequently more
imagination than sensibility. Southern souls
would understand nothing of this heroism
of sentiment; passion is devoted, but jealous;
and that pretended delicacy, which sacri-
fices love to friendship, without the injunc-
tions of duty, is nothing but an affected
coldness.
All this generosity at the expense of love
is merely an artificial system. We must not
q2
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? 228 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
admit toleration, or rivality, into a sentiment
which is then only sublime, when, like ma-
ternal and filial tenderness, it is exclusive
and all-powerful. We ought not, by our
own choice, to place ourselves in a situation
where morals and sensibility are not of one
accord; for what is involuntary is so beau-
tiful, that it is alarming to be condemned to
give orders to ourselves in all our actions,
and to live as if we were our own victims.
It is, assuredly, neither from hypocrisy,
nor from dryness of character, that a writer
of real and excellent genius has imagined, in
the novel of Woldemar, situations in which
every personage sacrifices sentiment by means
of sentiment, and anxiously seeks a reason
for not loving what he loves. But Jacobi,
who had felt from his youth a lively inclina-
tion towards every species of enthusiasm, has
here sought out for a romantic mysterious-
ness in the attachments of the heart, which
i9 very ingeniously described, but is quite
foreign to nature. .
It seems to mc that Jacobi understands
religion better than love, for he is too de-
sirous of confounding them. It is not true
that love, like rejigion, can find all its.
happiness in the renunciation of happiness
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? WOLD EM A R. . 229
itself. We change the idea that we ought
to entertain of virtue, when we make it con-
sist in a sort of exalted feeling which has no
object, and in sacrifices for which there is
no necessity. All the characters in Jacobi's
novel are continually tilting with their gene-
rosity against their love :--not only is this
unlike what happens in life, but it has no
moral beauty when virtue does not require
it; for strong and passionate feelings honour
human nature; and religion is so impressive
as it is, precisely because it can triumph
over such feelings. Would it have been
necessary for God himself to condescend to
address the human heart, if there were only
found in that heart some cold and grace-
ful affections which it would be so easy to
renounce?
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? 230 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Of a romantic Bias in the Affections of the
Heart.
The English philosophers have founded vir-
tue, as we have said, upon feeling, or rather
upon the moral sense; but this system has
no connexion with the sentimental morality
of which we are here talking: this morality
(the name and idea of which hardly exist
out of Germany) has nothing philosophical
about it; it only makes a duty of sensibility,
and leads to the contempt of those who are
deficient in that quality.
Doubtless, the power of feeling love is
very closely connected with morality and
religion: it is possible then that our repug-
nance to cold and hard minds is a sublime
sort of instinct--an instinct which apprizes
us, that such beings, even when their con-
duct is estimable, act mechanically, or by
calculation; and that it is impossible for any
sympathy to exist between us and them. In
Germany, where it is attempted to reduce all
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? OP A ROMANTIC BIAS. 231
impressions into precepts, every thing has
been deemed immoral which was destitute
of sensibility--nay, which was not of a ro-
mantic character. Werther had brought ex-
alted sentiments so much into fashion, that
hardly any body dared to show that he was
dry and cold of nature, even when he was
condemned to such a nature in reality. From
thence arose that forced sort of enthusiasm
for the moon, for forests, for the country,
and for solitude; from thence those nervous
fits, that affectation in the very voice, those
looks which wished to be seen; in a word,
all that apparatus of sensibility, which vi-
gorous and sincere minds disdain.
The author of Werther was the first to
laugh at these affectations; but, as ridicu-
lous practices must be found in all countries,
perhaps it is better that they should consist
in the somewhat silly exaggeration of what
is good, than in the elegant pretension
to what is evil. As the desire of success
is unconquerable among men, and still
more so among women, the pretensions of
mediocrity are a certain sign of the ruling
taste at such an epoch, and in such a
society; the same persons who displayed
their sentimentality in Germany, would have
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? 232 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
elsewhere exhibited a levity and supercilious-
ness of character.
The extreme susceptibility of the German
character is one of the great causes of the
importance they attach to the least shades of
sentiment; and this susceptibility frequently
arises from the truth of the affections. It is
easy to be firm when we have no sensibility;
the sole quality which is then necessary is
courage; for a well-regulated severity must
begin with self:--but, when the proofs of
interest in our welfare, which others give or
refuse us, powerfully influence our happiness,
we must have a thousand times more irrita-
bility in our hearts than those who use their
friends as they would an estate, and endea-
vour solely to make them profitable. At the
same lime we ought to be on our guard
against those codes of subtle and many-
shaded sentiment, which the German writers
have multiplied in such various manners, and
with which their romances are filled. The
Germans, it must be confessed, are not
always perfectly natural. Certain of their
own uprightness, of their own sincerity in all
the real relations of life, they are tempted to
regard the affected love of the beautiful as
united to the worship of the good, and to
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? OF A ROMANTIC BIAS. 233
indulge themselves, occasionally, in exagge-
rations of this sort, which spoil every thing.
This rivalship of sensibility, between some
German ladies and authors, would at the
bottom be innocent enough, if the ridiculous
appearance which it gives to affectation did
not always throw a kind of discredit upon
sincerity itself. Cold and selfish persons find
a peculiar pleasure in laughing at passionate
affections; and would wish to make every
thing appear artificial which they do not ex-
perience. There are even persons of true
sensibility whom this sugared sort of exagge-
ration cloys with their own impressions; and
their feelings become exhausted, as we may
exhaust their religion, by tedious sermons
and superstitious practices.
It is wrong to apply the positive ideas
which we have of good and evil to the sub-
tilties of sensibility. To accuse this or that
character of their deficiencies in this respect,
is like making it a crime not to be a poet.
The natural susceptibility of those who
think more than they act, may render them
unjust to persons of a different description.
We must possess imagination to conjecture
all that the heart can make us suffer; and the
best sort of people in the world are often dull
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? 234 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
and stupid in this respect: they march right
across our feelings, as if they were treading
upon flowers, and wondering that they fade
away. Are there not men v! hd have no
admiration for Raphael, who hear music
without emotion, to whom the ocean and
the heavens are but monotonous appearances?
How then should they comprehend the tem-
pests of the soul?
Are not even those who are most endowed
with sensibility sometimes discouraged in
their hopes? May they not be overcome by
a sort of inward coldness, as if the God-
head was retiring from their bosoms? They
remain not less faithful to their affections;
but there is no more incense in the temple, no
more music in the sanctuary, no more emo-
tion in the heart. Often also does misfor-
tune bid us silence in ourselves this voice of
sentiment, harmonious or distracting in its
tone, as it agrees, or not, with our destiny.
It is then impossible to make a duty of sen-
sibility; for those who own it suffer so much
from its possession, as frequently to have the
right and the desire to subject it to restraint.
Nations of ardent character do not talk of
sensibility without terror: a peaceable and
dreaming people believe they can encourage
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? OF A ROMANTIC BIAS. 235
it without alarm. For the rest, it is pos-
sible, that this subject has never been written
upon with perfect sincerity; for every one
wishes to do himself honour by what he
feels, or by what he inspires. Women en-
deavour to set themselves out like a romance;
men like a history; but the human heart is
still far from being penetrated in its most in-
timate relations. At one time or another,
perhaps, somebody will tell us sincerely all
he has felt; and we shall be quite astonished
at discovering, that the greater part of
maxims and observations are erroneous, and
that there is an unknown soul at the bottom
of that which we have been describing.
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? 236 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
CHAPTER XIX.
Of Love in Marriage.
It is in marriage that sensibility is a duty:
in every other relation virtue may suffice;
but in that in which destinies are inter-
twined, where the same impulse, so to speak,
serves for the beatings of two hearts, it seems
that a profound affection is almost a ne-
cessary tie. The levity of manners has in-
troduced so much misery into married life,
that the moralists of the last age were ac-
customed to refer all the enjoyments of the
heart to paternal and maternal love; and
ended by almost considering marriage only
in the light of a requisite condition for en-
joying the happiness of having children.
This is false in morals, and still more false
with regard to happiness. ?
It is so easy to be good for the sake of
our children, that we ought not to make a
great merit of it. In their first years they
can have no will but that of their parents;
and when they have arrived at youth, they
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? OF LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 2Sf
exist by themselves. Justice and goodness
compose the principal duties of a relation
which nature makes easy. It is not thus in
our connexions with that half of ourselves,
who may find happiness or unhappiness in
the least of our actions, of our looks, and of
our thoughts. It is there alone that mo-
rality can exert itself in its complete energy;
it is there also that is placed the true source
of felicity.
A friend of the same age, in whose pre-
sence you are to live and die; a friend whose
every interest is your own; all whose pro-
spects are partaken by yourself, including
that of the grave: here is a feeling which
constitutes all our fate. Sometimes, it is
true, our children, and more often our
parents, become our companions through
life; but this rare and sublime enjoyment is
combated by the laws of nature; while the
marriage-union is in accord with the whole
of human existence.
Whence comes it, then, that this so holy
union is so often profaned? I will venture to
say it--the cause is, that remarkable inequality
which the opinion of society establishes be-
tween the duties of the two parties. Chris-
tianity has drawn women out of a state that
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? 538 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
resembled slavery. Equality, in the sight
of God, being the basis of this wondeful re-
ligion, it has a tendency towards maintain-
ing the equality of rights upon earth :--di-
vine justice, the only perfect justice, admits
no kind of privilege, and, above all, refuses
that of force. Nevertheless, there have been
left, by the slavery of women, some preju-
dices, which, combining with the great li-
berty that society allows them, have occa-
sioned many evils.
It is right to exclude women from politi-
cal and civil affairs; nothing is more opposite
to their natural destination than all that
would bring them into rivalry with men;
and glory itself would be for woman only a
splendid mourning-suit for happiness. But,
if the destiny of women ought to consist in
a continual act of devotion to conjugal love,
the recompense of this devotion is the strict
faithfulness of him who is its object.
Religion makes no distinction between the
duties of the two parties; but the world
establishes a wide difference; and out of this
difference grows intrigue in women, and re-
sentment in men.
"What heart can give itself entirely up,
"Nor wish another heart alike entire? "
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? OF LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 239
Who then, in good faith, accepts friendship
as the price of love? Who, sincerely, pro-
raises constancy to voluntary infidelity? Re-
ligion, without doubt, can demand it; for
she alone knows the secret of that mysterious
land where sacrifices are enjoyments:--but
how unjust is the exchange to which man
endeavours to make his companion submit!
"I will love you," he says, "passion-
"ately, for two or three years; and then,
"at the end of that time, I will talk reason
"to you. " And this, which they call reason,
is the disenchantment of life. "I will show,
"in my own house, coldness and weari-
"someness of spirit; I will try to please else-
"where: but you, who are ordinarily pos-
"sessed of more imagination and sensibility
"than lam; you, who have nothing to em-
"ploy, nor to distract you, while the world
"offers me every sort of avocation; you,
"who only exist for me, while I have a
"thousand other thoughts; you will be sa-
"tisfied with that subordinate, icy, divided
"affection, which it is convenient to me to
"grant you; and you will reject with dis-
41 dain all the homage which expresses more
"exalted and more tender sentiments. "
How unjust a treaty! all human feeling
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? 240 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
revolts from it. There is a singular con-
trast between the forms of respect towards
women, which the spirit of chivalry intro-
duced in Europe, and the tyrannical sort of
liberty which men have allotted to them-
selves. This contrast produces all the mis-
fortunes of sentiment, unlawful attachments,
perfidy, abandonment, and despair. The
German nations have been less afflicted than
others with these fatal events; but they
ought, upon this point, to fear the influence
which is sure to be exerted at length by mo-
dern civilization. It would be better to shut
up women like slaves, neither to rouse their
understanding nor their imagination, than to
launch them into the middle of the world,
and to develope all their faculties, in order
to refuse them at last the happiness which
those faculties render necessary to them.
There is an excess of wretchedness in an
unhappy marriage which transcends every
other misery in the world. The whole soul
of a wife reposes upon the attachment of
her husband :--to struggle alone against for-
tune; to advance towards the grave without
the friend who should regret us; this is an
isolated state, of which the Arabian desert
gives but a faint idea:--and, when all the
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? OF LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 241
treasure of your youthful years has been re-
signed in vain; when you hope no longer,
at the end of life, the reflection of those
early rays; when the twilight has nothing
more that can recall the dawn, but is pale
and discoloured as the phantom that fore-
runs the night:--then your heart revolts;
and if you still love the being who treats you
as a slave, since he does not belong to you,
and yet disposes of you, despair seizes all
your faculties, and Conscience herself grows
troubled at the intensity of your distress.
Women might address those husbands
who treat their fate with levity in these lines
of the fable :--
"Yes! for you it is but play--
"But it steals our lives away. "
And uatil some revolution of ideas shall take
place, which changes the opinion of men as
to the constancy which the marriage-tie im-
poses upon them, there will be always war
between the two sexes; secret, eternal, cun-
ning, perfidious war; and the morals of both
will equally suffer by it.
In Germany there is hardly any inequality
in marriage between the two sexes; but it is
because the women, as often as the men,
break the most holy bonds. The facility of
VOL. III. R
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? 242 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
divorce introduces in family connexions a sort
of anarchy which suffers nothing to remain
in its proper truth or strength. It would be
much better, in order to maintain something
sacred upon earth, that there were one slave
in marriage, rather than two free-thinkers.
Purity of mind and conduct is the first
glory of a woman. What a degraded being
would she be, deprived of both these qua-
lities! But general happiness, and the dig-
nity of the human species, would perhaps
not gain less by the fidelity of man in mar-
riage. In a word, what is there more beau-
tiful in moral order than a young man who
respects this sacred tie? Opinion does not
require it of him; society leaves him free:
a sort of savage pleasantry would endeavour
to ridicule even the complaints of the heart
which he had broken; for censure is easily,
turned upon the sufferer. He then is the
master, but he imposes duties on himself;
no disagreeable result can arise to himself
from his faults; but he dreads the evil he
may do to her who has intrusted herself to
his heart; and generosity attaches him so
much the more, because society dissolves his
attachment.
Fidelity is enjoined to women by a thou-
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? Ofc LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 243
sand different considerations. They may
dread the dangers and the disgraces which
are the inevitable consequences of one error.
The voice of Conscience alone is audible by
man; he knows he causes suffering to an-
other; he knows that he is destroying, by his
inconstancy, a sentiment which ought to last
till death, and to be renewed in heaven:--
alone with himself, alone in the midst of se-
ductions of every kind, he remains pure as
an angel; for if angels have not been repre-
sented under the characters of women, it is
because the union of strength and purity is
more beautiful, and also more celestial, than
even the most perfect modesty itself in a
feeble being.
Imagination, when it has not memory for
a bridle, detracts from what we possess, em-
bellishes what we fear we shall not obtain,
and turns sentiment into a conquered diffi-
culty. But; in the same manner as in the
arts, difficulties vanquished do not require
real genius; so in sentiment security is ne-
cessary, in order to experience those affec-
tions which are the pledges of eternity, be-
cause they alone give us an idea of that
which cannot come to an end.
To the young man who remains faithful,
r3
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? 244 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS.
every day seems to increase the preference he
feels towards her he loves; nature has be-
stowed on him unbounded freedom, and for
a long time, at least, he never looks forward
to evil days: his horse can carry him to the
end of the world; war, when to that he
devotes himself, frees him (at least at the
moment) from domestic relations, and seems
to reduce all the interest of existence to vic-
tory or death. The earth is his own, all its
pleasures are offered to him; no fatigue in-
timidates him, no intimate association is ne-
cessary to him ; he clasps the hand of a com-
panion in arms, and the only tie he thinks
necessary to him is formed. A time will,
no doubt, arrive when Destiny will reveal to
him her dreadful secrets; but, as yet, he sus-
pects them not. Every time that a new ge-
neration comes into possession of its domain,
does it not think that all the misfortunes of
its predecessors arose from their weakness?
Is it not persuaded that they were born weak
and trembling, as they now are seen? Well!
From the midst of so many illusions, how
virtuous and sensible is he who devotes him-
self to a lasting attachment; the tie which
binds this life to the other! Ah, how noble
is a manly and dignified expression, when,
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? OP LOVE IN MARRIAGE. 245
at the same time, it is modest and pure!
There we behold a ray of that heavenly
shame which beams from the crown of holy
virgins, to light up even the warrior's brow.
If a young man chooses to share with one
object the bright days of youth, he will,
doubtless, amongst his contemporaries, meet
with some who will pronounce the sentence
of dupery upon him, the terror of the children
of our times. But is he, who alone will be
truly loved, a dupe? for the distresses, or
the enjoyments of self-love, form the whole
tissue of the frivolous and deceitful affections.
Is he a dupe who does not amuse himself in
deceiving others? to be, in his turn, still
more deceived, more deeply ruined perhaps
than his victim? In short, is he a dupe
who has not sought for happiness in the
wretched combinations of vanity, but in the
eternal beauties of nature, which all proceed
from constancy, from duration, and from
depth?
No; God, in creating man the first, has
made him the noblest of his creatures; and
the most noble creature is that one which
has the greater number of duties to perform.
It is a singular abuse of the prerogative of a
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